Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I was going to dress up this post, make it all pretty and formal, but I find that I'm just not up for it -- so we'll make this quick.

Title: Lamp. Tooltip: 'That was definitely not in my top three wishes.' 'Who said anything about YOUR wishes?'

So Randall shot this out, and while it's not the prettiest it still goes down alright. I could even be convinced to like it, if I were into this sort of thing.

I'm not going to spew warm lies everywhere, because I like it classy, candles burning and dim lights and crap. This? This was quick and dirty, but at the very least it gets down to business without hesitation. It doesn't leave a sour taste in my mouth, just something... cheap, like those salted snacks you buy at convenience stores for twice what they're worth. They're all show, and they're done before you even realize you'd opened up the bag. But that's how life is, isn't it?

Four panels:(1) Enter scene, a man and the mystery!(2) As we all do, he rubs the mystery hoping for a pleasant ending(3) In a moment of surprising ecstasy, the mystery produces something foul(4) The man is filled with doubt, anguish, or disgust.

Simple formula, familiar concept of the man-and-lamp, with a gross subversion. Did I expect that? No. I did not expect Randall's finish so yes, my expectations? Subverted.

Randall got lucky tonight, in that his conscience forbade him from using words. There's the onomatopoeic "Splort", but his splort can be forgiven him. Just picture this comic with something like "Oh look, a lamp!" or a second character that says, "If you rub it, maybe a genie will come out!" or in the last panel an "ew!" or something. Randall did NOT do this -- he SHOWED and did not TELL. So give him points, gentleman and lady! Randall used his medium, communicated everything correctly, and did not include Post-Punchline Dialogue!

Before you let off a load of complaints, I will preemptively unclothe the matter at hand: panel four. Now, Randall uses these Void-Creatures for his Creations, and they are faceless -- this is a rule. So the "reaction" lands in our eyes and we're left blinking in minor confusion. We know what just happened, but we're still left wanting... is it anguish here? Disgust? Confusion? Who knows? We never will. We'll always be left wanting, because that is just the medium we've chosen to observe here.

I'd also like to point out the spectacular imagery of the lamp: Panels 1 through 3 it rises logarithmically into climax, until the 4th panel where it is suddenly left flaccid and dangling, spent: The joke has been forced out of the comic.

Oh, and the tooltip: not awful. It seems dangerously close to explaining a joke that didn't need explaining, but it adds the more entertaining idea that not only does the lamp extrude fluid, but that it WANTS to do so. Because, you know, otherwise wanting would have nothing to do with this.

So, final mark of 8/10: Creative, lacking finesse.

Also notable: I think this has created the greatest potential for goatkcd ever. Seriously, Randall can never one-up himself in that regard. Ever.

Oh, and Rob wanted me to include a Megan joke so:

Inb4 That's what she said.

Squeeze hard, hold that poseYou know I like it -- do it!Sweetheart, I'm the bossAnd when you get close to itI'm gonna make tonight a show (oh, oh)I'll make your love grenade explode (nanana!)

102 comments:

But the voters didn't vote for a Gamer2k4/Ravenzomg coalition, they voted for a Rob minority! This is totally undemocratic.

[too obscure for the world-wide audience?]"

So you think I'm just part of the "world-wide audience" eh?

But Ravenz! if Rob has only been voted in by Minority... that means LESS than 49% of the voters wanted him in! More than half do not want him in! How could he possibly claim with a straight face for it to be "undemocratic" for your coalition to try to supplant him, when more than half of the readership does not want him there in the first place? Sounds like he shouldn't have any right to complain to me!

Ugh, worse than the lactation comic. Fortunately several people in the forums seem to agree:

"...I'm going to go ahead and pretend this comic never happened...""xkcd reaches a new low of crassness & mediocrity. :(""Most of the comics that aren't trying to be really nerdy or referencing something semi-obscure have been rather C&H like for awhile now."

Yet the reaction here (extrapolating from 1 review and two comments) is almost positive! What gives?

Has xkcd reached the wrap-around point on the quality scale? Am I a lowly forumite who doesn't appreciate this kind of humour?

That comic was... awful. "Rubbing a genie lamp is like masturbating the lamp so it might spurt some liquid after a while LOL!" Seriously? That's it? Did he just browse through Urban Dictionary until he found "rub a lamp", or was he merely recalling one of the few jokes made by foolish, mortal non-geeks in his early childhood which weren't at his expense?

Also, "alarm older nun" is an anagram of "Randall Munroe", which this comic would. Not because it's sexual but because it's so awful and Randall's continued popularity will make the nun doubt the existence of a supreme benevolent being.

This doesn't really have anything to do with today's comic but, has there ever been a gay person in XKCD? Off the top of my head I can't even think of any mention of homosexuality in any of the comics, except for that one sleep deprivation comic that said "does being a mermaid for five seconds make you gay?" or something.

I imagine Randull would regard homosexuality as male chauvinism, and is envious of effeminate male hairdressers because he assumes they get to sweep up the hair and sniff it. At least there's a job he'll enjoy when people find out the Emperor has no clothes (except the ones he stole from Megan's laundry basket).

...awflet's be honest I could probably write a script to do these. Delivers the latest strip to me, I press a button to confirm its direness, it does the post and I get to go back to sleep.

In less automated news, the new Filibuster is not awful per se but rather overextends the 'broken record' thing; Questionable Content has not gotten any better; and Something Happens, though normally quite good, has gone on one of its semi-regular intermissions, in this case uninteresting nonsense verse.

Hey y'all, I've been reading this blog for a while but have never commented. Yet I just got a blog, so here we go...Anyway, who thinks Randy was staring at his shrine for Megan when "drawing" this "comic"?

Also, he has no job other than this comic, but still has to ask for help 3d-ifying it. He also didn't think through how comics where the foreground obscures the background will work, or things like his model railroad where it can't be sliced up into layers.

Well, the xkcdsucks comment box is being, as usual, a pain in the ass. Now I can only comment in Firefox, and not throught OpenID authentication. WHAT THE FUCK BLOGGER!

Okay, to the comic. The 3D effect looks hideous, but crafty. At least it fits the comic. But...

...none of the other comics do. That "Plato's Cave" comic feature an odd "cleft" when the desk moves independently from the blonde woman. And, overall, there's little to no movement, so the difference is insignificant.

After I realized the script was automated it became more interesting. Then I realized that he didn't write it because he can't actually code. Why the fuck is this guy popular for stick figure jokes again?

This is a scathing satire of needless 3D in modern film. I refuse to think of it as anything else, because I can not comprehend existing in a universe where people, including Randall, might legitimately think this is funny or cool.

@Rochambeau that's a completely different joke. Of course the general idea of "real life in 3D" has been done before. I'm willing to bet every single one of us who has friends in real life have both made the same joke in a social environment. The point is the specific joke being made, which is the rejection of real life in favour of staring at computer screens on the basis of a common complaint about 3D movies (the value of the burrito videon on the other hand lies in its presentation). Even that has no doubt been done before, but isn't so absolutely obvious.

It's a moderately good joke by xkcd standards, and a mediocre-but-decent-filler one by real comedic standards.

At first I hated this April Fool's joke. It's ugly and broken and it makes my eyes want to puke blood. But then I discovered this, and realized that all the inept and lazy horror was worth it because of this!

See, you are all avoiding the question because none of you are anywhere near as manly as I am.

And @Ann it really isn't very nice to disregard a person just because she has had a bit of cosmetic surgery. Sure, they botched it a bit and ended up having to carve out one of her breasts but that doesn't make her less of a woman. Even if it does, she was at least half a woman and actually let me have a second go before she dumped me so she really should count as one full notch.

Just because he had sex with an infinity of women doesn't mean he had sex with his mum. If there really was a set containing an infinity of women, he could always take his mom out, it would still be a set with an infinite number of women.

Correction: mole has slept with 1/0 women. Anything divided by zero is simultaneously positive and negative infinity, or ±infinity if you will.

That means mole has also slept with an INFINITELY NEGATIVE number of women at the same time. How can you sleep with a negative number of women? Do they cancel out the positive ones?? Where can I go to meet one of these negative women???

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.